Royal Thomian 2022 — trying out a new strategy
As we all know, everything is topsy turvy in the world today. What was, isn’t. What is, well, is rather confusing.
Amidst this chaos, a committee was formed to determine the fate of the Royal-Thomian big match in Sydney. For once, they unanimously agreed. On what, is yet to be decided.
According to unconfirmed reports from highly unreliable sources, the committee decided they had had enough of the exotic strands alpha (Wuhan), beta (Boris Johnson), delta and omicron (not to be confused with oxymoron). And a Royal-Thomian match was placed firmly on the 2022 calendar — on Australia Day.
This started the usual panic of searching for players. Tweets were flying all over the place with the young group, while the older group were getting a combination of faxes and letters in the mail. With the older groups, the requirements had been relaxed a bit this year and there was only one — that you can still stand and fog up a mirror, with the latter being optional. Standing straight was no longer a requirement.
With great difficultly 10 players who can stand were found for the Masters. An SOS was dispatched to the prime minister who made a few phone calls and found two Royalists hiding in the capital — Saman and Ravi. They were worried that their visa’s had expired, so they were relieved to learn it was a call up for a cricket match.
Skipper Praba decided a few practice sessions were in order. They are yet to be scheduled. He then proceeded to send out lengthy WhatsApp messages, which some of the boys are still reading. The older guys are waiting for the letter version.
On match day, somehow (as always) the old boys showed up. However it appears that one of the young boys missed a tweet or two and the Royal Open team was short a player. They sent their top diplomat to politely demand the best player from the older group. After a lot of head shaking, a trade was agreed to of ace cricketer Thaya.
The old boys were seen introducing themselves to each other as their memory is not what it used to be (when they used to cram a year’s worth of notes in 10 mins before the exams). They did the new Covid greeting of punching each other followed by wincing in pain.
After match fees were collected through Bitcoin transfers, the skipper skipped out to toss. When he called out for a coin to do the toss, some tosser in the Royal tent quickly did another bitcoin transfer to the skipper’s digital wallet. The umpires were then seen in a huddle getting a lesson on which side of a bitcoin is Satoshi Nakamoto’s tail and how to read a blockchain. The umpires decided they had had enough of the Royal skipper and told the Thomians they had won the toss. Royal was sent in to bat.
Meanwhile in the Open big match, the Thomians hammered their way to 200 runs in 40 overs. Over 50s Thaya was slipping around in slips and occasionally pointing at the ball that had gone through his legs for a young gun to go fetch. In the over 60s, the Thomians racked up 94 runs in 30 overs.
Praba gathered the lads to share a carefully crafted strategy, which had then been documented into a plan, around which a process had been mapped by Jono. All that was missing was the step-by-step procedure manual, which Selva said was WIP but the skipper said was unnecessary because everyone was so old and struggled to read. He told them to do what they had done all their lives, which unfortunately was ‘not much’. This made everyone happy.
One bright spark who works in a startup (where they challenge everything under the sun) decided to play devil’s advocate and whispered into the skipper’s ear that he should try something new. Instead of always coming up with a winning strategy, he suggested trying a losing strategy for a change. The skipper was impressed with that novel and innovative suggestion, he decided to give it a go.
Dinesh was sent out to the middle with Gav with specific orders. The orders were that the stars were out of alignment and the world had turned upside down, and Dinah needed to set things straight by hitting a ball into orbit with the precision of a SpaceX rocket in order to realign the stars.
Meanwhile the scorers had already put 30 runs against Dinesh’s name with 5 sixes in a row and headed to the kottu stand. They had to rush back when Dinah’s timing was slightly off (by a year or two) on his very first ball (that was meant to realign the stars). All the calculations sent by Dinesh’s good friend Elon Musk on how to launch a rocket ended up, well, in the hands of gully — a mere three meters away from the bat. That was definitely a failed launch.
The rest of the batting side has always looked up to Dinah as the benchmark. So they proceeded one by one to also follow his lead and gift catches to fielders, albeit not as quickly — simply because they were not as good. Then wise old man Soumy was charged with resurrecting the faltering innings. After some very well placed shots, he decided to hammer one to the boundary and set off for two runs. On his second run, he realised to his dismay that he hadn’t charged his batteries overnight and he ran out of power half way down the pitch. It was a catastrophic engine failure.
Before we knew it Royal was in a royal mess. 38/6 with more than half the overs still remaining. The losing strategy was working beautifully. That’s when two Royal aces who hadn’t paid attention to the skipper’s detailed speech found themselves at the crease — Radesh (aka C Loyd) and the skipper himself Praba (aka A de Silva). They batted like stars — the ones that Dinesh was trying to realign. Then David, Jono and Saman finished off the innings giving us a total of 109.
Between the innings break, considerable thought was given to the situation at hand, which was whether to have the chicken or lamb lamprais. That decision proved harder than you think as they were both superb. During lunch, the really old boys led by experienced old hand Kesara chased down the Thomian target with Shantikumar setting the stage on fire with a blistering 30 runs. Meanwhile, the young lads in the Open game appeared to have a similar losing strategy to the Masters team and wickets were falling like flies.
After lunch, the Master’s skipper gathered his top bowlers and put them through some very tough drills, which involved keeping the ball on the pitch. That too proved hard. Everyone was still reminiscing on the lamb and chicken lamprais. After about 5 mins of intense practice, the skipper ordered everyone to stop before they were too tired and their confidence was completely shattered.
The skipper was later spotted talking strategy with the groundsman who appeared to be telling the skipper to leave him alone. But the skipper persisted and came back with a solid plan B. He plans to share that with us one of these days.
When we got back on the field, the Thomians got off to a solid start, with their top order scoring steadily. Bowlers Saman and Jono did a great opening act and yet the batsmen kept the balls out. At the half way point they had only lost 2 wickets and were half way there with the runs. After two-thirds of the overs had been bowled, with 6 wickets still in hand and their top batsman at the crease, the losing strategy was working perfectly. Nothing better than a strategy that comes to fruition exactly to plan.
That’s when the Royal skipper decided to try the groundsman plan B, just for fun. Radesh was given the ball along with Ravi. The two of them brought the scoring to a standstill. Oh dear, the losing strategy was now faltering. With the mounting pressure, the lid eventually popped. The Thomian skipper skipped down the stumps and then had to skip back to the dressing room after being stumped beautifully off Gavin’s bowling by opening bowler Jono who was now behind the stumps (yes, he’s a talented cricketer). A couple more quick wickets followed courtesy of catches from Radesh who was trying to run away from the catches and yet they kept finding the middle of his palms. Now the cat was among the pigeons.
With 5 overs to go, they needed only 19 runs. The skipper pitched in with an over. Gavin kept the other side tight. When the batsmen only managed 3 runs an over it came down to 9 required off the last over. This is when the skipper’s tough drills before the innings paid off. Gavin was told to just keep the ball on the tarmac, which he did.
And like that, it went from being a Royal mess to being a Royal Flush. Royal ended up winning a match that they had lost all the way from the first ball to about the last over of the day. The world is really upside down. We’re hoping that the stars are re-aligned now.
